Police said the arrested man Subhash, alias, Gaurav, had made a friendly entry in Laxmi Devi’s home with an intention to rob her since he knew that she lived alone. Police said he hadn’t planned on killing her.

Police said the arrested man Subhash, alias, Gaurav, had made a friendly entry in Laxmi Devi’s home with an intention to rob her since he knew that she lived alone. Police said he hadn’t planned on killing her.

Three days after a 70-year-old woman living alone was found dead in her house with around a dozen stab wounds on her body in west Delhi’s Khyala village, the Delhi Police on Saturday claimed to have solved the murder case. A 30-year-old unemployed man, also a drug addict, living in the same locality was arrested on Saturday by a joint team of the north-west and west districts police.

Police said the arrested man Subhash, alias, Gaurav, had made a friendly entry in Laxmi Devi’s home with an intention to rob her since he knew that she lived alone. Police said he hadn’t planned on killing her.

“But since the elderly woman identified him, resisted his robbery attempt, and tried to raise an alarm, Subhash panicked and killed her. He feared that leaving her alive would lead to his arrest, if she informed neighbours and the police about his crime,” said a senior investigator.

The elderly woman was stabbed in her face, chest and back with an ice pick. She was also attacked on her head with a blunt object, probably a hammer, multiple times.

Milind Dumbre, deputy commissioner of police (northwest), said that Subhash was the same suspect who was seen in a CCTV camera dressed like a woman and walking in the lane outside Laxmi’s home around 5.30pm. The suspect was carrying a backpack and there were blood spots on his clothes.

During the investigation, the DCP said, a large number of people including relatives of Laxmi were questioned. The police said they learnt from credible sources about Subhash who was seen roaming outside Laxmi’s home on the day of the crime. Subhash had been missing from his home since the crime took place.

“We collected information about Subhash’s whereabouts and eventually caught him from Karala village. He was waiting for a vehicle to flee the city when we nabbed him. Laxmi’s one pair of gold bangles were recovered from him,” said Dumbre.

Subhash’s interrogation revealed that the main door of Laxmi’s home was ajar when he entered. He stabbed her multiple times with an ice pick and smashed her head against the wooden charpoy. Thereafter, he ransacked the home and fled with valuables, said police.

Laxmi Devi lived on the ground floor of her two-storey home for the last 15 years. She had retired as a sanitation worker of the municipal corporation of Delhi and was not registered with the police’s senior citizen cell. Her nephew, Vinod, was the first to see her body after a local shopkeeper informed him that her home was latched from outside and she was not responding to neighbours’ calls.

The elderly woman has five daughters who are married and live in different parts of the city. Her husband, Uttam Singh, died around 49 years ago while her son, Shyam, passed away six years ago due to a heart ailment.